Emma Pickering

From hiding spycams in children’s toys to coercing partners into online sex work on platforms such as OnlyFans, abusers are increasingly weaponising technology to perpetrate new and insidious forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG).

One in three women in the UK has experienced online abuse or harassment, with almost one in five of them reporting that the perpetrator was a partner or former partner, according to research we at Refuge, the UK’s largest specialist domestic abuse charity, carried out in 2021. For young women, the scale of the abuse was even higher, with two in three reporting online abuse or harassment.

Perpetrators of domestic abuse often use technology to extend existing patterns of coercive control. Location-tracking tools, instant messaging, and social media have made it easier than ever to monitor, harass and intimidate partners or ex-partners under the guise of ‘normal’ online behaviour. We’re increasingly seeing the use of stalkerware, hidden trackers and social media ‘maps’ to surveil survivors – part of a broader pattern of control over what survivors do and who they see.

The issue is now so great that this summer, a little-publicised Home Affairs Select Committee report found that the government is unlikely to fulfil its pledge to halve VAWG unless it introduces effective strategies to tackle online misogyny and tech abuse and increases coordinated funding to do so.

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At Refuge, we have seen this crisis unfold firsthand. In 2017, in response to soaring demand, we established a specialist team to support survivors of tech-facilitated and economic abuse. Referrals to this team increased by 205% between 2018 and 2024, highlighting an urgent need for specialist support.

Stalking was one of the most common harms reported to this team last year, with perpetrators using social media to repeatedly message and keep tabs on their victims. One survivor, who was stalked and harassed on social media by a man they met on a dating app, told us: “Somehow he managed to find all of my social media accounts and even those of my friends and family. The messages just kept coming, and no matter how many times I blocked him, he would manage to create new profiles and continue to harass me.

“At first, the police didn’t take the situation seriously and it took me filing an official complaint for them to press charges,” she said. “Just because abuse is happening online, it doesn’t mean that the effects of it aren’t serious. My anxiety and depression spiralled because of the abuse and I had to take time off work. I was terrified that he was behind every corner.”

Stories like this have led us, along with others in the sector, to urge Ofcom, the UK’s independent internet watchdog, to include stalking as a standalone ‘key harm’ in its upcoming guidance for technology companies on minimising VAWG, which it is required to publish under the Online Safety Act 2023. This would ensure perpetrators are held accountable and survivors are better protected.

We also urgently need stronger regulation around surveillance and intimate image abuse, which perpetrators commonly use to humiliate, distress and psychologically harm survivors. Many survivors tell us their abusers have used hidden spycams – embedded in everything from furniture to children’s toys – to film them without their knowledge, and then used the footage to blackmail and control them.

While it is illegal to share intimate images without consent or even to threaten to do so, there is a loophole for perpetrators who create intimate images without their victim’s consent but don’t share them, despite this still being a serious violation of survivors’ autonomy and privacy. Proposals in the Crime and Policing Bill to make it an offence to even install equipment intended to capture intimate images without consent are a welcome first step towards resolving this, but the government must go further still.

Ministers must urgently follow through on their commitment to criminalise the taking and making of all intimate images without consent – including the use of AI to generate deepfake nudes from real images. So-called ‘nudification’ apps, which are specifically designed to produce these images and videos, have boomed in popularity over recent months, leading Australia to announce plans to ban them earlier this month.

This issue of perpetrators weaponising intimate images is being exacerbated by a lack of safeguards on popular sex work platforms, which not only allow abusers to flourish but also to profit from the abuse. Survivors report being coerced into creating content or having intimate photos or videos of themselves uploaded without consent.